Roundup.

Web Retailers Develop Tools To Improve Online Shopping

It was the sales clerk's guffaw in response to my query at the third auto parts store I visited that did it -- it turned me into an online shopper.

Determined to fulfill the wish of a 16-year-old on my Christmas gift list, a new driver with a yen to accessorize the old clunker he drives, I asked the clerk, "Do you carry cow seat covers?"

For a nanosecond the clerk struggled for composure, then gave up and said, "Don't think so, lady. Didn't know they wore 'em."

This wouldn't happen online. No search is too goofy in cyberspace. That's one of the charms of shopping here.

Granted, it is still an emerging industry and many retailers still have a long way to go before they devote major resources to develop sites that keep customers coming back for more. Many retailers are in the early stages of selling online, with some of the attendant glitches you might expect, such as low inventory, long download time, difficulty in placing or tracking an order, and confusion about returns.

Forrester, an Internet research firm, predicts online sales to reach $4 billion this year but that's pretty small potatoes compared to the $57 billion consumers are expected to spend on catalog purchases in 1999.

During the next year, however, many of your favorite stores are likely to expand their goods and services online and legitimately offer a satisfying spree similar to what you get via well-established retail outlets and direct mail-order catalogs. What is likely to make or break your return visits to any cyberstore is the development of shopping tools that let you do things you just can't do in a brick-and-mortar store.

Some innovative online shopping tools are available this holiday season. Read on for some tips that will help you avoid shopper fatigue.

1. Show me the merchandise.

Some tools bridge the gap, like Evanston-based Perceptual Robotics Inc.'s Look and Buy software that enables any browser to control a remote camera located in any retail showroom, gallery or warehouse. Fran Greenman, director of marketing, said, "In effect, the store becomes the Web site, allowing visitors to scan the store, zoom in on a detail, see the back of the item - all things you do naturally within a store but can't duplicate in a catalog or at an online site that's laid out like a catalog." Test drive this shopping experience at any one of the enabled cyberstore sites by visiting www.perceptualrobotics.com and click on the "Try it" icon. You can visit New York's FAO Schwarz's Star Wars store, Gallery Furniture in Texas and Harley Davidson's Chicago-area store, among others.

2. It's out there somewhere.

You can locate an item that a retailer is unlikely to stock in stores where inventory is dictated by quantity purchases. Black and white, cow-print, car seat covers are a case in point -- tough to find in local stores but easy to locate in cyberspace. A straightforward search at Yahoo.com required a few quick clicks through recreation...auto...accessories...seat covers...prints...cow print.... Eureka! The site itself, an auto accessory wholesaler, was more than a little rickety. It was hard to locate price and shipping charges and I got bumped off the entire site twice due to some technical glitch. But, it didn't matter for a simple reason: The object of one 16-year-old's desire had been located. That made up for the fact that the site wasn't sophisticated or easy to navigate. And, nobody guffawed.

3. It's WAY out there somewhere.

Suppose your giftee's vision of sugarplums is, say, deer antlers to hang above his fireplace. Maybe she dreams of an authentic roaring '20s flapper dress to wear to a millennium gala. Although online auction sites can't guarantee success, they can do some serious looking and save you scads of time.

At Bidder's Edge you can search across 25 of cyberspace's merchant and person-to-person auction sites and see if anyone, anywhere has what you are looking for and what he or she wants you to pay for it. Both www.ebay.com and Yahoo! Auctions offer another handy tool: You can request an e-mail notification when that hard-to-find item shows up. It may not be in time to tuck under the Christmas tree; but, once again, the thrill of locating the perfect gift may make up for it.

4. Give the gift that keeps on giving.

Rather than a gift certificate -- the cop-out option of all loving relatives who have no clue what to buy kids and teens on their list -- consider giving them a mini-shopping spree in the form of a virtual credit card. DoughNET www.doughnet.com, RocketCash Corp and IcanBuy all offer grownups a way to fund an online credit card that kids can use at that particular site to shop in the stores housed there. Some of the malls comprise 50 or more stores, so the selection is pretty good. The sites also offer money management and learning tools, guaranteed to turn young visitors into financial wizards, or at least make them smarter about how money works.